Wednesday, 29 June 2011

You don't care care too much,what others think or feel, it's clear.The channels of your mindare kept clean anduncluttered with thoughtof how society changes.So that, to you, what was, is nowand ever thus will be.Or similar dreadpronouncement.While the wannabe like you group,will splutter about "political correctness' and"Only saying what everyone thinks".Which ignores the fact thatanyone, who thinks,doesn't think like you.The problem is not the thinkingit's the lack of simplehuman decency.

Women less productive - EMA boss-------------------------------------------Hamish is a 51 year old New Zealander, married with 2 children. He has been writing poems for about 3 years, and has had a some published. He also blogs, at Light of Passage.

Ancient remains found in Dublin----------------------------------------Helena's work has appeared in anthologies and literary magazines including; The Stinging Fly, The Moth, and the Spoken Ink audio website. Last year she was runner-up in the Patrick Kavanagh Award.---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Editor's note: Each day, we move about the land, but how often are we conscious of the layered history beneath our feet?

Sunday, 26 June 2011

What a week! Not only have we published the work of three poets new to Poetry24, but we've had a storming response to Clare's call for 'modern nursery rhymes' on Twitter. Social networking at its best.

At the top of the week, Greg Gibson drew inspiration from the bizarre actions of a TV actress, with 'The Extra', and Fran Hill placed Amy Winehouse under the microscope in 'A Serbian concert goer's nursery rhyme'. Although this was Fran's entry for our 'Saturday Challenge' we couldn't resist publishing it on Wednesday. And it's her blend of topicality and humour, that makes Fran the winner of our first challenge. Congratulations to her.

David Francis Barker contributed to Summer Solstice celebrations with his evocative 'English Blue', while 'A North African Cable' by Douglas Polk and Deirdre Cartmill's 'Hunger' gave us cause to turn our thoughts to more sobering issues, pointing out the shameful realities of human struggle against oppression, and the worsening food crisis in developing countries.

Finally, a big thank you to all those who have left comments. It makes such a difference when poetry becomes a two-way conversation. Keep them coming!

Saturday, 25 June 2011

Last week we asked for your topical nursery rhymes, and waited with bated breath. Sing a song of £4.99? Three mice with visual impairments? ... and waited. Then I had a go...

little Jack Horner,sat in a cornereating his five a daynot like his siswho was so obesethey filmed her for a Channel 5 documentary...

Then we got this cracker from Fran Hill, which was so topical we stole it and used it for Wednesday's post.

And so, our favourite entries:

The Riddle of the Outrider

I gallop, we gallop, "For freedom!" we cry,a hundred-and-seventy horses and I.We ride through the kingdom of sabres and palm,just doing the shopping and spreading alarm,defying the princes to toss us in jail,we're bearing the standard and blazing a trail.So jump in your saddle and spur on your steed,we'll gallop together and start a stampede!

Food: A hungry world---------------------------Deirdre Cartmill’s first collection Midnight Solo is published by Lagan Press and her second collection will be published later this year. She is based in Belfast.----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Editor's note: Oxfam predicts a billion people will go undernourished, this year.

Arrests at Stonehenge summer solstice celebration---------------------------------------------------David Francis Barker: 'I try to paint, write poetry, prose, sometimes music - I guess that makes me an artist.' francisbarkerart.wordpress.com--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Editor's note: Those who witness the sun rise on the longest day, at Stonehenge, often experience an overwhelming sense of being connected to nature by ancient rite. Each year, it seems, more non-pagans are taking an interest in pagan beliefs.

Where the Arab spring will end is anyone's guess-----------------------------------------------------------Douglas is a poet from Nebraska. He has published three books of poetry; In My Defense, The Defense Rests, and On Appeal.------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Editor's Note: Douglas equates the turmoil in the Middle East, with the unravelling of a cable. But is it all coming undone at the seams, or will these events ultimately have a unifying effect?

Mother and daughter left dead granny unburied for six months while they pocketed her benefits-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Greg Gibson is set to graduate from LJMU in July 2011. He appears sporadically on the Liverpool poetry scene and is continuing to study a Masters in writing.-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------Editor's Note: In the world of celebrity, some argue that bad publicity is better than no publicity. How do we feel when the likes of TV actress, Hazel Maddock, make the headlines for all the wrong reasons?

Sunday, 19 June 2011

All the poets this week have been new to Poetry24 and we hope you enjoyed them.

What better start to the week than Jess Green's Stop the Poetry. I've seen Jess perform this and when she says 'I will stand on the tables of cafes' and 'light the fuse of villanelles' she really isn't kidding!

Another feisty young poet, Rebecca Audra Smith took a well-aimed pop at Barbie this week with Metharme (the title, by the way, is from Greek Mythology - the name of the daughter of Pygmalion, who fell in love with a statue he carved. I looked that up so you don't have to!). And Thursday's poem was by another student, Simrita Iota, who hasn't written poetry before but managed to evoke a disjointed, disturbed, street-level view of the world in A Smile.

As a new generation of young poets takes on the big issues of the day - funding cuts, the ruthless quest for physical perfection, homelessness - again, Jess hits the nail on the head: 'you will not stop the pens moving'

But it isn't just the students who are up in arms - the appalling gendercide which is still going on in China provoked a blistering attack from Wynne Huddleston in Red, Red Rain. And Anthony Baverstock took a slightly different approach to give his views on the Arab Spring in Rising Tide yesterday, which inspired our first Saturday Challenge.

We were pleased to receive a poem from award-winning Irish poet Jaki McCarrick - The Ice House - a timely reminder that we're happy to include the occasional news item from your own locality too.Keep them coming!

Saturday, 18 June 2011

The bully built a castle, little castle made of sand,And he built it on the seashore where the water laps the land.How the children of the village cheer, a mighty awesome din,As his castle walls are flattened by the tide a-rolling in.

-------------------------------------------------Anthony Baverstock is from Colchester, home of Humpty-Dumpty, which might help explain his curiosity about nursery rhymes.Anthony says: I've started to become interested in how nursery rhymes throughout history have been used to encode and convey news and opinion. It is in this 'tradition' that I wrote the rhyme below about the Arab Spring

Saturday Challenge

We'll be setting the occasional Saturday Challenge, and for this first one, we'd like you to send us a new nursery rhyme on a topical theme. Entries must be sent in (to the email addresses in the submission guide above) by noon (GMT) next Friday 24th June. We'll publish the best and the winner will receive a copy of 'Off the Wall Comic Verse Anthology'.

Friday, 17 June 2011

A well-known aromatherapist is washing up dishes,her yellow Marigolds deep in sudsy water,perhaps thinking of summer holidays in placesshe might find quality Clary Sage or Lemon Yellow.The killer has meanwhile already entered the house.And with the separated mother-of-three hummingby the sink to the radio, he plunges the knife in her backtwenty-seven times. When the news hits the tabloidsit emerges that the gold-coloured Art Deco houseis worth a million, and that Eircom and the ESBhave made her and her husband ‘offers’. Five yearslater the killer is still not caught though the townhas its suspicions. On occasion I pass the housewith its name at a slant in stone, its broken windowsand fly-about yellow duck-tape, its echoes of RonanCollins’ show-band hour, whiffs of Eucalyptus.

Sun rising, subtle wind, my light, visible, shutters opening.The white,Flashes between my fingers,‘Will work for food’,Screams the cardboard, in the wrinkled hands,Of a trembling man, from across the road,As a silver Mercedes shines,In the middle of us.As my future flashes.A smile. I want to send.

Congress Must Cut UNFPA Funds to Stop Forced Abortions-------------------------------------------------------------------------Wynne Huddleston’s poetry can be read in nearly 40 publications. She is the winner of the 2010 Lifepress Grandmother Earth Environmental Poetry Contest. Learn more about Wynne, HERE.

Monday, 13 June 2011

You can spend our pensions on dinner with the Beckhamssack the police then ask them to work for freeto trick, lie and arrest teenagerswith shifty eyes and frustrated mindsmake us pay to have babies and glue back our bonespick the pockets of sixth formerspenalise the unmarried and patronise the women.I will stand on the tables in cafeson the grass of parksgive me a soap box or just a flagstone on a street corner.I’ll light the fuse of villanelleslook down the barrel of a sonnetblow Blake in the airchoke the monarchy in metaphor.My mother warned me about men like you;lie and charm and cheat and slime your way insidethen rip out the life support.Distract us with a Royal wedding‘look what your life could have beenif you hadn’t lacked a little inspiration.’You can crumble the foundationson which we’ve built our livesbut you will not stop the pens moving.You can’t stop me waking from dream filled sleepcollect the stained glass storiesfrom my leaking brain.Take away our pens and paperand we’ll just make the words move faster,louder in the corners of pubsI’ll prance along the bar until they listenclimb the walls of buildings;because if we keep telling the tales of the war you’re ragingon the unrich, the unprivate, the unmiddleagedthey won’t forget.Slap super injunctions on clause sixtytell us to calm downkettle us, keep us, beat us and berate usbut you won’t stop the poetry.

Sunday, 12 June 2011

This week we published material by two names that are probably becoming familiar to you - Rachel North and Philip Challinor. Rachel's 'Picture of an American Soldier' was a stark reminder of the ongoing human cost of war, and Philip had a jab at the coalition with 'What a Blinder'.

We've listed forty five featured poets here at Poetry24, to date. Each of them has had at least one poem showcased and, judging by the number of returning visitors we have each day, they are getting a healthy audience. A couple of things for poets to remember, though. Do try and respond to comments, when they are left. This encourages the kind of interaction, we'd like to see more of. And, there is no time gap between submissions. So if we publish your poem, and you have another waiting in the wings, don't hold back, send it in.

In her editorial, last week, Clare raised the subject of audience interaction. We've both been a little puzzled at how few people leave comments after reading a poem, and it's been suggested, by one reader, that this maybe due to "…shyness - or lack of confidence in opinion."

Both, Clare and I share a passion for making poetry more accessible, and believe that Poetry24 has a part to play in that aim. All around the world, people's lives are touched by news reports that can offer an ideal prompt for the poet’s voice in all of us. That means, your opinion counts, whether you are the author or the reader.

Saturday, 11 June 2011

They speak of working familiesthose suits on the TVadvising their decisionsare for people just like me.They talk of average earningswe could never hope to get,we're all in this togetherthat's what they say... and yetI cannot fail to noticeas I look outside the doortheir average nuclear family...

Drug makes hearts repair themselves--------------------------------------------Martin is a writer, and former columnist. He has twice been editor of Viewpoint (a forum for INDEPENDENT internal comment within the University of Southampton), and is co-founder of Poetry24.-------------------------------------------- Editor's note: When I first read this story, I thought, great! Then I started thinking about the mice, and that IS fatal.

Wednesday, 8 June 2011

There are good days, fair days andvery bad days. Funny days, seriousdays, and unexpected days. Problems,not always of my own making. And others,where it is clearly my own fault, I admit.

How shall I compare thee?

There are good rapes, okay rapes,and very bad rapes. No funny rapes.So I suppose that makes them all kindof serious. At times unexpected.

Unforeseen.

I may give in, under pressure, as it is saferthat way. Less physical damage or injury.This could be called ‘consent’ in court. Sonot proper rape. Though it does not feel likeconsent at the time. More defeat really, evenwithout a struggle. Or putting up a fight.

How shall I conjure your impact?

Like being overruled, overpowered.Which of course is routine for women.But violation in the guise of ‘seduction’sounds sultry and ‘romantic’. More thanidle ‘banter’. And must be my faultanyway. I obviously asked for it.

Editors' note: When I heard Val perform this poem at the Dead Good Poets, her distinctive voice - calm, clear, matter-of-fact - adding to the power of her words, I practically wrestled it off her there and then. Clare

Monday, 6 June 2011

The photograph depicts a man at war.You will have seen him many times before,the still, stunned face of shock and awe,his gaunt and gallowed gaze, full of dread,replaying the howling horrors in his head.

His boneless body rests against the rocks,the while his mind makes memories to mockthe dazzled, dream-filled boy, the costof whose survival has climbed so highhe thinks, one day of this despair he’ll die.

The photograph depicts the hell of war.You will have seen it many times beforeand gazed with eyes of shock and awe;and wondered at the man who caught his lookand used his grief, to bring us all to book.

Sunday, 5 June 2011

A curious aspect of Poetry24 is how quiet our readers on. We know you're out there - we check our stats! - but you rarely leave comments on the poems. Maybe the poems speak for themselves? But we'd love to know what you think of the poems, a favourite line or your views on the issues they cover. Please tell us why you don't comment in the comments box below!

Meanwhile, it's difficult to generalise about a week that has covered everything from mass murder to Martin Hodges' pleasingly-alliterative Chasing Cheese.

But the main theme was a sense of loss:- Patricia McMahon's harrowing Violation listed Ratko Mladic's appalling legacy in Srebrenica before felling the reader with its devasting closing line: '...we still live with, our hearts shaved raw'; and Rachel North's powerful sonnet His Father's Died voiced Tom Daley's rage against his own loss. If only, as Geoffrey Datson puts it in his thought-provoking 'Pet Rock's Lament': 'none of it is true.'

It was almost a relief to have an attack of killer vegetables (not a line I'd expected to write in a poetry editorial) in Juliet Wilson's Death and the Cucumber. But the week finished with a lingering sadness, in Stephen Smith's evocative An Irish Emigrant Returned, which tells the story of a generation and doesn't seem topical until a long-suppressed anger surfaces in its closing lines.

Finally, thanks to EssentialWriters.com for this but don't be shy to comment here too!

Saturday, 4 June 2011

There we were again at the Watford Gap,Spring air, weak tea and bacon sandwiches our lot,Another motorway morning on the roadTo London. Our tobacco tins were full,Our packs of papers well-counted, for cigarettesMeasure out the day and pepper up slack timein the ganger's hut when the rain would come.Yes, we were fit and ready for the labouring!Homes far behind us,England's air pouring over us,The strength rising in us,The sadness falling from us,For friends are travelling with us,And the earth would rise before usAs we dug down the days in London's chalkAnd clay, poured pillars of concrete, raised towers,Buried pipes, laid the kerbs and paved the streets.Ach warriors of the building site we were,Who fought the work with shovel and pick and won.And when the pubs were closed and the music gone,In our whiskey armour, with our beery shields,In the rooming-houses we fought the lonely man.We put him down, but always he came againAgainst us. We are old now and our bones ache.The memories in our hands are pain,When fingers cannot close over a pen,Or any slender thing. In the pension book,I scrawl my name and with a fool's quick smile,Avoid the cashier's awkward look,For there, parading on the T.V. Screen,In Ireland more than us a thousand timesMade welcome, is the English Queen.

A recent immigrant from Ireland, Steve has had agitprop plays performed in Ireland and a documentary broadcast on RTE in 1998. He has written and staged 2 plays in Liverpool and reads at the city's Dead Good Poets. More...

Thursday, 2 June 2011

Set fire to the earth, make molten rocks blaze,bring forth the ravaging winds and torrentsOf rain, let the twisters lacerate, rendthe world in deadly destruction and razethe buildings to the ground . Let all men gazeupon this savage loss, make madness bendtheir minds, claw their eyes and tear their hair, sendthem to despair. This is the end of days.

The world should share the pain that’s made day night,that’s lit a fire of grief that sears his souland blackens all the colours in his sight.Let all the world beware, his father lied,took oath, and made his spirit black as coal,He said he’d live, but now his father’s died.

Wednesday, 1 June 2011

Today is Dario and Malik’s birthday, my twin boys.I visited their graves. At least I can do that, lay flowers.Their father, Rahil, was never found. On his birthdayI visit their graves. A part of him lies there.Had they lived, my boys would be thirty today.I would have seen them grow into manhood,Get jobs, meet girls, dance, sing, get married. I would be a grandmother now, fussing over my grandchildren. I would breathe in their baby-smell,Watch them grow, go to the school Dario and Malik attended,Have fun in a playground filled with other children.There are fewer schools now, fewer children, a dearth of males.Ratko Mladic and your cohorts, look what you’ve robbed us of.When you decided to massacre in cold blood the men and boysOf Srebrenica, you left us bereft of our bloodlines,No male to seed our women, give them the gift of motherhood.After your butchery, the only babies bornWere the offspring of rape, their crazed mothersStill screaming in their nightmares. I saw you once, Mladic, a swashbuckling khaki-clad army chief.It was early summer 1995. By July of that year you had slain my men,Exterminated the Muslim male population of Srebrenica and beyond. Now I see your photo as they prepare to take you to The Hague To be tried as a war-criminal. The swagger is gone. You look frail. But you lived to be 69, a gift, a right, you denied my boys, my man.You may be sentenced to prison but it will be a far cry From the sentence you imposed on the women of SrebrenicaWhen you slaughtered our men and boys and raped our women,A desecration so vile as to be incomprehensible,A violation we still live with, our hearts shaved raw.